When people talk about the problems besetting the Afghan National Army, three issues usually jump to the head of the pack: the difficulties the ANA has in supplying its soldiers in the field with food, clothing, ammunition, and shelter; the issue of corruption at all levels from the ministerial to the grunts on the ground; and third, the ability—or the willingness—of the ANA to fight.   

The first two issues were the topic of a conversation I had last month with Major General Richard Formica, commanding general of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A), the organization tasked with training the Afghan army and police. Formica had no qualms about discussing the areas in which the Afghans lack capacity, and described a force that is rapidly increasing in size and fighting effectiveness (when it fights), but is still years away from being able to stand on its own.

Most troublesome for the ability of the ANA to operate independently of NATO forces is the issue of logistics. At its core, logistics is a function of planning, Formica said, and when it comes to Afghan forces, “typically at most levels they don’t plan well, they’re more spontaneous.” While the ANA has a system for resupply in place, Formica says that “we want to force that system to work. We’ve asked the mentors along the chain to work with them at each level to try to force it to work. The reality on the ground is when you get ready to go do an op, if they don’t have it and we can give it to them we give it to them so we can go do the op. But it would be a lot worse to just sit on the FOB and not do ops.”

This is something I heard from the American mentors on the ground during my embed in September, and they weren’t happy about it. The ANA regularly will not think through what they might need—water, ammunition, etc.—for a long mission, because they know their American mentors will simply give it to them if they need it. After several months of this, the Embedded Training Team for the 2/1 Kandak in Khost decided to practice some tough love, and if the Afghans don’t bring enough water, they would simply refuse to give them theirs, trying to hammer home the lesson that planning for a mission is just as important as leaving the gate and executing it. The Team had some success with the method, and after a while the ANA started to bring their own supplies on missions. Still, their overall planning for missions was lackluster, but with the 2/1 Kandak at least, it was slowly getting better.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that the ANA has yet to stand up its own logistics and resupply units, as a result of the rush to train and field combat troops. Gen. Formica says that “In their defense, it’s only been the last couple of years that we started fielding Afghan [Combat Service Support] Kandaks in the brigade, and that was a deliberate decision made to field the infantry guys first. So now they’ve got CSS Kandaks in the brigades, and we’re trying to make that work.” As of right now, Formica continued, there is only one Afghan combat support battalion at the Corps level “and we’re going to delay the others until the next year and the year after that because the current emphasis is to get more infantry soldiers on the ground now.”

In other words, while NATO stands up Afghan fighting units, the coalition will continue to be responsible for making sure their food, clothing, and ammunition are provided to them.